


A Fresh Start

by DarkShadeless



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Magic, Gen, Healing, Implied Past Sexual Harassment, Leaving all of that behind and finding your way forward, Modern Thedas, Therapy, feelings because I can't write a freaking thing without making myself cry at some point, past bullying, past harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 11:35:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12364887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: University was supposed to be different. Alain had his doubts but he had chosen to move forward despite everything. He wasn't going to give up now.





	A Fresh Start

**Author's Note:**

> Because apparently I am working my way down the tropes on my quest to give Alain a happy ending in any Universe I can get my grabby hands on. Have fun ^^;

 

 

University had been supposed to be different. Looking down at his room assignment form, Alain had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be. That it would be more of the same and Maker, but High School had been- it had been bad.

It had been a trial from the start, when he was one of the last kids who hadn’t presented yet and his alpha age-mates were jockeying for position, pushing everyone else around until a teacher reigned them in temporarily.

Speculation about what he might be once he settled, that had been good natured just a class earlier, turned cutting. It hadn’t helped that one of the football team, Karras, had had it out for him specifically. Always pushing him around, making jokes about how someone so small and timid could really be nothing but an omega, just loud enough to be heard by everyone but not loud enough to be punished.

He wasn’t saying anything _wrong_ , after all. No secondary gender was better than any other and it was a fact that certain characteristics tended to crop up with the accompanying hormone balances. That just made Alain feel all the more helpless against the bullying. What could he say, really? Karras wasn’t saying much the homeroom teacher wasn’t, too. Only it was obvious he meant it differently.

With every day Alain had dreaded the moment he would present more. At the same time he had wished it would finally happen. Maybe the whole thing would blow over then.

Then that day had come. One morning he had gotten up, out of sorts and already steeling himself for school, and his sister had tried to snatch the last pancake only to drop it when he growled at her.

No one, and certainly not Alain himself, had expected him to turn out an alpha. He had barely made it above 5 foot 5 before his growth spurts had stalled out. He wasn’t, by any rate, very athletically built. Fit enough but nothing like the boys on the sports teams. He’d rather read a book any day.

From preschool on he had never been one to start fights with other kids. Always a bit too shy, eager to please and not sure how to go about it. He made friends alright but sometimes socialising was hard. Some people would walk all over him. He never knew how to make them stop. He definitely wasn’t like Hawke in senior year, who would walk into any room as if he owned it.

The bullying didn’t flag. If anything it got worse. Maybe it wouldn’t have but Karras couldn’t seem to let it go, that the shrimp, their class nerd, had gone and presented an alpha. His circle of friends followed his lead. 

For all of that, Alain almost preferred when they picked on him as a group. When Karras caught him alone, when there was no one else to see, there was an edge to the whole thing, something that made him break out in cold sweat just thinking about it.

He tried to tell someone, he did. It was terribly embarrassing but he couldn’t take it anymore, Karras was scaring him. Only they didn’t believe him, not really. The teacher would look at Alain sympathetically and say things about how young alphas just were like that and now that he had presented he would have to buckle up and get through it. Once they had established their position to their satisfaction it would all stop.

It didn’t, of course. It didn’t until the captain of the football team, Rutherford, went looking for his errant tackle for a practice session and caught Karras cornering Alain in the back of the locker room. Only then someone _finally_ believed him and it had come out how far the harassment had really gone.

His parents were outraged. They refused to make him go back, badgered the school about the neglect of their child until he was allowed to do his last year from home. There were no words to describe how grateful Alain had been for that, for their support.

 

_‘Honey, why didn’t you tell us?’ His mother hadn’t let go of him since they had come home and collapsed onto the couch. She didn’t sound accusing but Alain couldn’t help but curl in on himself anyway._

_He knew why. He had been so ashamed. He was an alpha, he was supposed to be able to deal with such things, to be better than that. To be stronger. When Alain finally managed to put these things in words a few days later his father looked at him, more than a little helpless himself. ‘Oh son.’_

 

After a while, after he could make himself do it, Alain had seen a therapist about it. They had been meeting for a few months now. It… it was good to have someone to talk to who wouldn’t judge him, or who would be hurt by what he said, like his parents would. They didn’t mean to, he knew, but it made it hard to talk to them about it.

Grace had encouraged him in going to university. His grades were good and he was more than a little interested in biochemistry. He had even made the cut for a scholarship, despite everything.

The crux was that Alain hadn’t been sure he could do it, if it meant an environment like high school had been. Grace had argued that it wouldn’t be. He could make a fresh start and if something did go wrong he had his family, he had her, to help when he was struggling. She had even referred him to a colleague when he had decided against doing his courses in Kirkwall. It was just too close to home, too many of the same people that he might run into.

Which was how Alain had come to be here. The Ostwick University for Higher Education.

He had barely made it past the door and the first hurdles were already cropping up. In Kirkwall he could have stayed with his parents, they had offered more than once. He had known he would have to find his own lodgings here, had assessed his options beforehand. The information that had slipped through the cracks in the process was that the student dormitories were assigned by secondary gender.

The box stood out on his form, black and accusing and empty. He had been staring at it for some time.

“Need some help with that?” The lady managing the office, a small elven woman, was looking at him evenly. She had insisted he call her ‘Miss Valentina’, please, because everyone did. Then she had proceeded to verbally decimate an idiot who had come in demanding to be helped and cutting the line, while Alain tried to hide behind his paperwork. He might be a little terrified of her.

“Uhm.”

Her eyes fell to the paper in his hands, skimming it until they found the one, very empty box. “Ah. That the one giving you trouble, hm?” Alain’s shoulders came up to his ears. It wasn’t hard information to find. It should have been easy. _It wasn’t._ Things like these always made him feel like a failure, when he had problems that other people would never, wouldn’t even think twice-

Miss Valentina derailed his train of thought, one of the spirals Grace had taught him to recognize. He knew he shouldn’t let himself follow them, they never went anywhere good. “Well, we’ve got the alternative program too. If you’re interested.”´

 

 

The alternative program, it turned out, was… well. Alain wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. How he felt about maybe being someone it applied to.

He was standing in front of a small student housing block, with the flyer in hand Miss Valentina had given him. It was- It was. Alternative. Certainly that.

There were flowerboxes out front, small explosions of colour, still pretty despite the year slowly turning to autumn. They were, for some reason, accentuated by home-made cardboard signs of oversized bees that made terrible puns in happy looking speech bubbles. The bee drawn on the corner of his flyer was starting to make more sense. Even if he still wasn’t sure why the rest of the drawings were there, or if that one on the left was really supposed to look- well. It looked like a dick. The whole flyer was a little more colourful than anything he would have expected to come out of Miss Valentina’s hands.

 _For people of all gender identities and everyone in between._ it proclaimed.

The house itself seemed fine. A little worn and like someone with a lot of energy and imagination had gotten their hands on a box of street chalk and the walls. Some windows were ajar and muffled voices could be heard from inside. It figured. They were supposed to have an informational meeting right now, the one he was supposed to go to, to get his introduction sorted and see if he wanted to apply to live here.

Alain squared his shoulders. He could do this. Even if it turned out it wasn’t for him he could still go to the regular dormitories. It might not be so bad. He couldn’t avoid other alphas forever. Having to share a room with one of them wasn’t something he felt ready for but he would have to figure something out.

A dwarf opened the door, when he knocked. The tiniest dwarven lady he had ever seen, juggling about two bowls of snacks more than she should have and with a mechanical pencil stuck in her hair. Alain wasn’t sure how it wasn’t falling out. “Hi!” She was. Bright. Enthusiastic? She looked a little like she would take to house walls in her free time and draw a seven foot high representation of Robo-Godzilla wearing a birthday hat because she could. “I’m Dagna! It’s so great you’re here! Are you coming to the meeting?”

“Yes?” Alain found himself with his arms full of snacks faster than he could blink. How had she even done that? He barely managed to keep a hold of everything.

“Fantastic! It’ll be fun, you’ll see.” So far he felt a little overwhelmed, at the most. _Oh Maker, what have I gotten myself into?_

Dagna dragged him down the hall, chattering away all the while about integration, free expression of self and No-Pants Fridays. He might have misheard the last one.

By the time they got to the meeting hall Alain wasn’t sure if chancing the regular dormitories might not have been the better decision. What if they were all like this? On the other hand, so far Dagna seemed like a caffeine driven force of nature but not actually interested in giving him a hard time. Perhaps a little too invested in making sure he had a good one, instead.

“-and the Residence Halls Association will want our new representatives list by the end of the week.” Alain furtively took in the room while he dropped the snacks off. The meeting hall was more of a living room with many chairs and a few tables. Maybe they used it for communal activities too.

There were about thirty people, in a rough half-circle around a tall guy next to ta flip chart with a list on it. He was pointing at ‘RHA representation’ as he finished the sentence. His audience groaned. “Now come on, people. None of that. What are our new arrivals supposed to think?”

“That A stands for Assholes!” A redheaded male shouted from the back. He earned himself some muttered agreement and a look of great disapproval from up front. “Really Huge Assholes!” Laughter from all sides.

The leader of the meeting brought a hand up to his face, half hiding an expression that seemed torn between resignation and amusement. “I know things have been difficult between us and certain parties of the Association but that’s no call to be unprofessional, Max.”

“Anyhow. Volunteers?” And just like that he called the whole room to order and they fell in line. Alain slid into a chair close by, watching how it played out. They were a colourful bunch, as unruly as the outside of the house had implied and yet the whole meeting played out in an ordered fashion. Little wonder. The tall one had the effortless presence he had always envied in other alphas. In the good way, too, not like some he could name. Confidence and command, gentled into something you wanted to follow with charisma and good humour. Hawke had been like that, too, even if his humour had been truly cringe worthy.

It was actually not as strange as Alain had feared. Most topics sounded completely normal, group activities, room assignment plans, division of chores and such. Only some of them were a little outlandish. Apparently No-Pants Fridays were indeed a thing and all parties involved should please remember, that that didn’t mean they were allowed to run around naked where people might see that didn’t want to be involved in such. There was some protest to that from the left-hand side, summarily handled with, “Dresses do exist. So does _underwear_. Have some decency, we’re not a fraternity.”

They worked their way down the list. It occurred to Alain too late to wonder why the last topic there was ‘Introductions’. Shouldn’t such be handled in the beginning?

“Alright! We’ve almost made it, congratulations people.” Slightly exhausted cheering. Alain had been there for a good two hours, by that point, and they had started before he ever came. He couldn’t help but admire their dedication. No one had slunk off because they got bored, everybody was contributing in their own way. It was nice.

“As all interested new students should be here by now, time for introductions. Then we’ll break this up and you can all have some snacks, talk to people if you like.” Oh Maker, they were supposed to introduce themselves? In front of everyone? What were they even supposed to say? Alain couldn’t help but think of the form, of all the things that had asked of him.

“I’ll make the beginning shall I?” It was probably meant to calm people’s nerves, give them something to hold on to.

Most of the room took it for an incentive for mischief. “Speech! Speech! Speech!”

The man waved them down. “Oh shush, you.” He cleared his throat and they obligingly fell silent again. “So, my name is Mellard Amell.” Wasn’t that one of the higher class families in Kirkwall? “I’m doing a double major in art and pedagogy. I wasn’t so sure about the second one but then I had to deal with _you_ lot on a daily basis.” Complaints and groans. Mellard laughed. “I usually run these meetings, unless someone else volunteers. If you have any problems you can come to me at any time.” He made sure to look at everyone. Alain averted his eyes when his attention came around to land on him.

Introductions went on, picked up first by students that weren’t here their first year. Some gave the same information that had been laid out as a guideline, other’s said something completely different.

A blond elf, Sera, gushed cheerily and somewhat menacingly, about bees, honey and- Alain wasn’t sure he caught it all. A dark skinned guy, Cremissius ‘Krem’ Aclassi, had to introduce a friend of his because that one didn’t want to talk.

Then it was his turn and he stumbled through the lines. About how he was from Kirkwall and had come over to study biochemistry. No one laughed at him for that, thankfully. He hadn’t thought they would, they hadn’t with anyone else but- well. Maybe he had expected it a little, at least.

The meeting broke up. Everyone headed to grab snacks and something to drink. Alain was at a loss as what to do next.

“Hey!” He almost jumped out of his skin. For someone so loud Dagna sure could be quiet if she wanted to. Her grin was just as bright as before. “You’re new, right? Don’t worry, I told Mellard, he’ll be right over-“ She got grabbed by the blond elf girl with the bees before she could finish the sentence and dragged away still waving cheerfully. Alain couldn’t even protest.

 _Oh Maker._ “She’s quite something isn’t she?” The voice was quiet, now that it wasn’t pitched to carry. A little rough from talking so much and amused. Alain looked up at him and felt awkward, so awkward for- everything. There was that part of him that still cringed every time he was confronted with another alpha, someone so imposing that might push him around. He knew it was unlikely to happen like before, that it was all just in his head, but he couldn’t help it. Hadn’t found a way to get past it yet. Grace had said it would come, in time. He had to be patient with himself.

Alain shifted, nervously, scenting the air on reflex. He caught much and little at the same time. The whole room was warm with a mix of everyone in it and the food. He couldn’t make out the man speaking to him. Not unusual. He might even be using scent suppressants, those had become more and more common lately. “Ah, yes. She is.”

Mellard gave him a sympathetic smile. “Oh my. Were you even going to come here? Did she shanghai you at the door? I apologize.”

“It’s, it’s fine.” Alain found himself smiling back, just a little. He was still nervous as all Void but he could do this. One step at a time. “Miss Valentina gave me this?” He held out the flyer for inspection. “So, uhm, what do I do?”

The man looked it over, clicking his tongue and mumbling something about how they had gotten to the pre-printed version again, whoever ‘they’ were. Alain was starting to have an idea or two. “Well, if you’re really interested, you’ll have to come in for an interview.”

“An _interview?”_ He wasn’t sure about that. What would they even ask?

“It’s nothing bad. Just to get to know you a little, find the best fit for your needs. Everything else will be handled just like it usually would. Would you like to make an appointment now?”

Alain declined, citing he needed to think about it a little more, and fled towards the snack table. He spent the rest of the afternoon there, nibbling at chips. Listening in on other people’s conversations was about all he felt up to. After he had wound out of talking to a few of them he was left alone. Perhaps word had gotten around.

Should he do this? It was like nothing he had ever been a part of. Yet, just maybe, that could be nice. It was what he was here for, after all. A fresh start, trying out new things. Taking his life into his own hands instead of other people running roughshod with it.

 

 

The interview, it turned out, was with an employee of the Department for Diversity of the university, or so the sign on her door said. Josephine Montilyet. She was very kind. She also had to have had training in how to steer such conversations.

Almost despite himself Alain found himself opening up about his reasons for applying. About what had happened. A little, not much. “So, you see, I had hoped perhaps the dormitories would be gender-mixed, at least. All information said they were but, apparently, they only meant the _first_.” That had been a stupid mistake to make. _No. No, I’m not doing this. Self-recrimination isn’t a good thing._

Josephine seemed entirely appalled. “Of course. What a thing to be missing in our information packages! I’ll inform the necessary people at once.” She made a few notes, beside the ones she had already scribbled down. “And you’ve found the community of Skyhold to your liking?”

The community of _what_? Alain blinked, confused.

“Oh!” She laughed, but it didn’t feel as if she was laughing at him. More like she was laughing at herself and inviting him to join. “That’s what they call the house now. By joined vote, it seems.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratory whisper. “I hear the RHA is up in arms. All buildings are supposed to be named by campus-placement.”

Alain found himself sharing in her grin. That sounded like something the group he had met would do.

_Skyhold. Yes, that seems like a place I would like to live in._

 

 

He got his room within the week. It was a tiny thing, a corner room on the second floor, as far from the community kitchen as physically possible. Alain opened the door and thought he was in heaven.

There was only one bed. No space for anyone else. _He wouldn’t have to share._ They could have put him into a storage closet and he would have been thankful if that was the result.

But it wasn’t a storage closet. It made up for its size with its two large windows, out onto the campus. One of them had a niche his desk was fitted into, the other had an honest to the Maker window bench to curl up on. It made sense, in hindsight. The house might have been used for a canvas but beneath that it was built in bricks, in a style that looked rather old.

He closed the door, put his bag on the bed and took it all in. Taking just a moment to breathe, the way Grace had advised he should sometimes. _Yes. This… this might actually be something he could call ‘home’._ It was a relief. His worst fear had been that he would end up living in a place where he couldn’t feel safe, with no way to retreat when he needed it.

Alain wasted no time unpacking and making pictures of everything for his family. They hadn’t hounded him but their What’sApp chat notes had been telling. They were worried. He couldn’t blame them, he had worried too. A lot.

While his sister screeched over the size ‘TiNy!’ and the window bench ‘jasdqjabcdfjas’ with too many emoticons, he plugged in his small travel water heater and made some tea. He scrolled through her enthusiasm while sitting in the window, sipping at his cup and letting the warmth sink into his bones.

 _A fresh start._ Alain was starting to believe he might actually have that.

 

 


End file.
